Having completed the distribution of temperature probes in phase I and
salinity probes in phase II, the eMOLT project is now fully operational
with nearly one hundred monitoring sites throughout the Gulf of Maine.
The objective now is to simply maintain these long-term sites and fine-tune
our record keeping procedures. We strive to minimize the effort required
by lobstermen in accurately, systematically, and efficiently documenting
deployments. So that data can be collected, processed, and archived for
many years to come, we now propose "Phase III: Data Management ". The goal
will be to setup small computer stations at several locations along the
coast where eMOLT participants can get help in downloading, documenting,
and viewing their data. Industry representatives will be trained in all
aspects of the eMOLT operations including hardware and software. They will
train participants (ie lobstermen) to document data in paperless media
(ie with electronic logging devices and web-based forms). With a minimal
amount of equipment (laptops connected to the internet), the industry representatives
will ensure that all deployments are formally documented in a standardized
way so that all environmental records are properly stored in the publicly-available
eMOLT database. These industry representatives will report on a quarterly
basis to their respective lobster association representatives (MaLA, MeLA,
DELA, or AOLA) on the status of the local eMOLT records. As in the previous
two phases, the Gulf of Maine Lobster Foundation will act to distribute
the funds and equipment to the associations. While most of the funding
will go to the industry representatives and individuals to train those
representatives, administrative support will also be provided at the association
and foundation levels. Travel money is requested for all "representatives"
to attend quarterly meetings.

We are committed to this project. The participating lobstermen have
demonstrated tremendous enthusiasm for the study . We hope to sustain that
interest and provide them with data products in exchange for their efforts.

Rationale

The reality of climate change on a global scale becomes more evident
each year but the degree to which it affects our local marine ecosystem
is largely unknown. With a set of inexpensive monitoring stations
at a variety of depths off our coast, we hope to build an archive of
multi-year observations. We hope that this dataset will contribute
to our understanding of the long-term variability of temperature
and salinity, the most important physical oceanographic parameters.
In order for this dataset to be useful however, it needs to be well
documented and accurate. In order to detect a scientifically
significant variation in these quantities, the source of error must to
be kept at an absolute minimum. The lobster industry and the scientific
community can overcome these limitations given a concerted effort to systematically
document data. This is the general rationale of eMOLT Phase III.

The importance of data management can not be overstated. As an
example,
our recent eMOLT efforts to compile and archive the historical temperature
records from various labs around New England found information stored in
very haphazard and disjointed ways. Data collected from various
state and federal labs were received in a variety of forms including ascii
files, spreadsheets files, and handwritten logs. Prior to this effort
each lab had conducted their own sampling with little knowledge of the
other's efforts. Data collection was conducted with a variety of
equipment, regularity, documentation, and degrees of accuracy.
In some cases, the person responsible for collecting the data in years
past had retired and left little documentation of their efforts.
Even in the case of Woods Hole Harbor temperature data, the near-daily
records from 1880 through 1960 are apparently lost for good. The
only information we have from most of that period is a table of monthly
mean values from a particular publication (Bumpus, 1957). We are working
with a group from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to digitize
and analyze that data and continue to search for the lost log sheets.

As with any oceanographic mooring, the internally-recorded data is of
little or no use without a proper "mooring log". Mooring-deployment
cruises aboard scientific research vessels typically employ an individual
whose sole duty is to document the details of each event underway:
location of instrument on mooring line, serial numbers, date and time of
anchor drop, etc. This critical information needs to be carefully
transcribed to digital form and stored along with the actual time series
of information. Any physical oceanographer having gone to sea and
being familiar with moored observations knows the value of these logs.
While the physical act of attaching the instrument to the mooring is relatively
simple, the process of recording accurate information on a mooring
log is actually a more time-consuming effort. In the first
few phases of eMOLT, we have put conscious effort into the development
of a standard eMOLT log sheet which has fields for all the pertinent information.
It was developed in the simplest possible form to minimize the effort needed
to record the necessary information.

The second step in the documentation protocol is to merge mooring
logs from various participants. This requires a considerable
effort on the part of the association representative and/or, as we
are proposing here, the "industry representative" . It is important
that this merging process be conducted by a trained individual who is a)
comfortable with basic spreadsheet functions, b) is familiar with
basic principles of the internet , and c) is well known and trusted by
the local participants. It is not the responsibility of the scientific
party to compile the individual log sheets from participants.
The scientific party should receive compiled log sheets from the various
eMOLT representatives.

It is possible to bypass the requirement of both handwritten logs and
compiled spreadsheets when participants make use of the electronic logger
option.
We have implemented this option with the majority of the bigger offshore
operations and some of the Maine boats (thanks to DMR funded projects),
but it may be year or two before most of the inshore boats incorporate
these units as standard gear. As noted in the project plan
below, the Mass Lobstermen Association, in particular, are in need of electronic
loggers. The advantage of having time-stamped GPS fixes automatically
archived during each haul is obvious.

If the participants in this project are going to commit to the degree
of effort required to document deployments, they need to be provided with
frequent feedback. A significant amount of outreach is necessary
to contact each participant personally on a regular basis to demonstrate
to them that the data they collect a) is received and processed
and b) is available on the web in both graphical and digital
form, and c) is appreciated. We have found that it is necessary to
frequently remind participants that their data is important and that they
need to be conscious of the location(s)/depth(s) of their standard eMOLT
sites. It is necessary to find ways to display the data and to make
note of the most interesting features of the data.

No amount of technological advance can be useful without the work of
trained individuals to implement the technology and to properly validate
the output. If this was not the case, the next phase of eMOLT would
be to deploy oxygen and fluorescent sensors along with the temperature
and salinity probes. If this was not the case, we might
propose to buy many more probes and could easily find new participants
to deploy them. However, the rationale of eMOLT is to gradually progress
towards a system for collecting quality data. It is first necessary
to get instruments in the water, set up the infrastructure to handle large
quantities of data, and then set up the ability to report on that data
with an effective strategy.

No amount of electronic emails will replace the quality of personal
visits. Dockside discussions with individual lobstermen have
been the most effective form of communication in eMOLT phase I and II.
Hotel lobby conversations with participants at annual forums and weekend
retreats are far more informative than any web site ever posted.
Not all lobstermen want to log on the computer when they get home each
night.

One difficulty in communicating with the lobster community is
their dispersed geographic distribution. No one individual can make
personal contact with each of the nearly 100 participants without incurring
prohibitive travel expenses and hence the need for a team
of industry representatives at strategic locations along the coast.
These industry representatives need to be readily accessible to the participants
either in a waterfront office setting or willing to travel to the participants
individual homeport.

Another difficulty in communicating with the lobster community is the
real sensitivities of site information (lat/lon). Many lobstermen
are understandably uncomfortable in revealing trap locations to anyone
and hence the need for local industry representatives to convince
them of the importance of the site information for science sake.

Individuals involved in the day-to-day operations of the lobstermen
associations have little time for eMOLT tasks. The "association representatives"
(Spinazzola, Farrey, Grindal, Casoni) are typically busy with important
regulatory issues that involve their members. They are often on the road,
tied up in council meetings and legal matters with little time to devote
to eMOLT data processing. Since most of them are executive directors
of their respective organizations, they obviously have little time for
simple office work such as data entry and phone calls to participants.
It is hoped that the "industry representatives" will cover these
task for the "association representatives" but that the two
will communicate regularly. It is expected (see dissemination of
results below) that eMOLT results will be reported at an association
meeting on a quarterly basis by the industry reps.

(The scientific "rationale" of the eMOLT project was developed in
the previous proposals and a portion is repeated here. Reviewers
can view complete rationale sections by clicking on "proposal documents"
under the www.emolt.org web site.
As with the rest of the proposal, the most important words or phrases in
each paragraph are highlighted in bold font.)

A network of strategically-located bottom temperature and salinity records
in the Gulf of Maine/Georges Bank region would make an important contribution
to operational oceanography. Recent numerical modeling efforts
to characterize the important physical processes of our coastal ocean are
limited by a lack of near-bottom data for both initializing and validating
simulations. Just as weather forecast modelers need a large expanse
of data to initialize and assimilate the atmosphere, oceanographers
will require continuous readings of temperature and salinity to monitor
the mixing and advection of multiple source waters. Recent observational
programs like GLOBEC and ECOHAB have documented numerous "anomalous" events
due to unexpected displacements of water mass boundaries. These "events"
are episodic in nature. In the case of Georges bank (Manning et al,
2001; Bisagni et al, 1996) the episodic residency of two water masses
(Gulf Stream and Greenland ice melt origins, respectively) results in very
dynamic living conditions for organisms residing in this area. In the case
of the Maine coast (Lynch, et al. 1997, Mountain and Manning, 1994; Schofield
et al.1998) variability is often related to a combination of upwelling/downwelling,
river runoff, and influx of remote source waters. A long-term
inexpensive monitoring strategy is necessary to document the frequency
and extent of these events. While satellite imagery has provided a mechanism
to describe the spatial variability and complexity of the thermal structure
in our coastal waters it is hampered by clouds and fog in these areas and
only provides a temperature associated with the very skin of the ocean.
Deep near-bottom temperature has less bias associated with short term processes
making it better suited as an indicator of longer-term climate
variability than the seasurface value.

Understanding the relationship between bottom water properties and behavior
of Homarus americanus off the coast of New England may be an important
byproduct of this study. What are the scales of variability and what
degree of variability can initiate a migration of the lobster population?
Given the economic importance of Homarus americanus, very little
seems to be known about what factors govern the distribution and
migration of the New England stock. As reviewed by Factor (1995),
there are only a few studies in the past decades that have specifically
examined the dynamics of lobster habitats in the vicinity of the shelf
edge. References are made to Cooper and Uzmann (1980), for example, who
demonstrated an on-shore migration to warmer waters in the summertime after
releasing several thousand tagged lobsters and recapturing 12%. These
studies were conducted nearly thirty years ago. The hydrographic data that
was used to correlate with lobster migration was a monthly-mean bottom
temperature record averaged over a few decades (Colton and Stoddard, 1973).
They conclude that the lobster migration maintains a 8-14 oC thermal regime.
Can we resolve that range more accurately?

Much of the migration apparently is driven by the animal's life history
and reproductive cycle. Peak hatching of stage 1 larvae occur at
temperatures in the vicinity of 11-13.6C bottom water (Fogarty and Lawton,
1983) resulting in planktonic surface concentrations in May through September.
Harding et al. (1983) noted a 12.5 C surface temperature associated with
the first arrival of stage 1 and other, more detailed, conclusions in all
areas of its range. Larval release occurs in burst of up to 2000
individuals and results in swarms within the top two centimeters of the
water column (Herrick, 1895). After about four molting cycles/stages
the animal will reach its juvenile stage with carapace length increasing
from 2-5mm. The rate of growth depends largely on temperature (faster in
warm conditions) but this transformation generally occurs in less than
a few months. MacKenzie (1988), for example, finds that stage 5 lobsters
reared at 15 and 18 C had significantly greater dry weights and carapace
lengths than those reared at 10 , 12 , and 22 C. In the wild
environment, the highest survival rate is associated with rapidly increasing
surface temperatures which provide a relative short planktonic period of
life. While, "temperature is the most important factor affecting
growth and survival of larval and postlarval lobsters" (Factor, 1995),
high salinities >30PSU may be detrimental to lobsters in warm >20C water
(Sastry and Vargo, 1977). The optimal salinity reported by Templeton
(1936) is 30-31 ppt. Post-larval lobsters, however, have a tremendous
swimming ability and are able to move to different environments with speeds
of 15cm/s for up to five days resulting in 65 km excursions(Cobb et al,
1983).

What regulates the abundance and distribution of adult lobsters?
Relationships of lobster concentrations to environmental factors cover
a wide range of natural variability. Some reports such as Boudreau 1991,
show relationships with windy conditions just after hatching and year class
strength 8 years later. On the other hand strong stratification and
thermocline trapping may expose post-larval lobsters to longer periods
of predation. The dominant factor is not clear. Lobsters can sustain
a wide range of temperatures -1 to 30 C and abrupt changes of 16 C (Harding,
1992). The temporal variation of lobsters at a single location is
governed by the degree of movement. Movements come in the form of migrations,
homing, and nomadism. Much of the information on migration of offshore
lobsters comes from Cooper and Uzmann reports on tagging experiments in,
for example, 1971 and 1980. The overwintering strategy offshore tends
to keep the animals in preferred temperature range of 8-14 C. Uzmann
et al. 1977 estimates migratory speeds of these lobsters of 7.4-9.3 km/day.
While there is little doubt that the animals migrate great distances, the
unknown parameter is what triggers the initial response.

Hence, we hypothesize that there is an annual migration of lobsters
that is triggered by oceanographic events. The two-fold
objective of this study is to better understand 1) the frequency
and degree of thermal regime shifts in the Gulf of Maine/Georges Bank region
and 2) what effect these shifts may have on the migratory lobster populations
in that area.

The multiple scales of variability in both time and space necessitate
a multi-year data set to make conclusive arguments. Given
the relatively minor expense of the monitoring equipment relative to traditional
oceanographic moorings, a multi-year deployment is feasible. The intent
of this project however, is to simply introduce lobstermen to the probe
technology so that over the course of a few years they become familiar
with using the probes and comfortable with the operation. In years subsequent
to the funded period, it is anticipated that some fishermen will continue
to use probes, buy new probes, and contribute to an ongoing data pool.
In the very longterm, it is hoped that the information obtained in this
project will benefit the aquacultural community in describing the physical
environments lobster in the wild.

Review of Previous Work

The physical oceanography of New England's coastal waters has been under
investigation at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center for decades.
Recent studies of temperature and salinity (Manning, 1991; Mountain and
Manning (1994); Bisagni etal. 1996; Bascunan et al, 2002) as well as current
velocity (Manning, 1989; Manning et al. 1994; Manning and Beardlsey,
1996; Schlitz et al, 2001) variability have provided background information
to examine the biophysical processes (Manning, et al, 2001, Lough and Manning,
2002). While attempts have been made to numerically model the physical
mechanisms, the overriding conclusion of most of these investigations is
that the environmental processes of our continental shelf are far too complex
to simulate yet with any confidence. Observations are needed.

Nevertheless, numerical circulation modeling is bound to
be an important tool for fisheries oceanography in the future. A
set of modeling groups have recently developed at various universities
around New England. In addition to Dartmouth College, there
are now efforts underway at state colleges of Massachusetts (Chen et al.
2001), Maine (Xue et al, 2000), and New Hampshire (Pringle). The
latter individual has specifically addressed the lobster larval drift problem
as has Katz et al. (1994), Incze and Naimie (2000), and Harding et
al (2002) . One of the primary purposes of eMOLT, as explained in
the rationale section above, is to provide these individuals with insitu
data for initializing and validating their models.

Interest in the longterm consequences lobster larvae drift has
recently surged due to the predictions announced last year by the region's
lead marine biologist. Numbers of planktonic and settling lobsters
that apparently began to decline several years ago, given a 6-7 year lag
time for development, would not be enough to sustain a healthy adult
population (Steneck, 2001).

Discussion of "previous work", as conducted in the first two phases
of eMOLT, is appended below in a section called "Description of
Prior Results".

Project Objectives and Scientific Hypothesis

There is unlikely a group of people more interested in the environmental
condition of Gulf of Maine bottom water than the New England lobstermen
The eMOLT objective is to tap into that resource and provide these individuals
the information they have evidently been after for generations. While
there are many regulatory and territorial issues that tend to cause divisions
among the various factions, the one issue that unites them all is a real
curiosity and wonder of what governs the deep. What are the natural
causes of environmental change? Can we someday predict the onset
of a cold freshet? How long will it last and does it affect the lobster
populations? The four largest lobstermen associations in New England
have come together and collectively proven in the first two phases of eMOLT
that they can collect data needed to help answer some of these questions.

If interannual variations in temperature and salinity are limited to
a few degrees and PPTs, can we document these changes with scientific
accuracy? What is the source of error in comparing the conditions
at one site with the same site the following year? What constitutes a "site"
and how precise must one be in reoccupying that site/depth?

As noted above, the primary objective of eMOLT is to document the spatial
and temporal variability of water mass properties off the coast of New
England. By monitoring the temperature and salinity at dozens of
fixed sites around the Gulf of Maine region, we hope to quantify the scales
of variability. One of the long-term scientific goals is to distinguish
between advective and locally driven events that influence the bottom
water conditions. Given multiple time series along the coast and
within different basins, we expect to track the influx and transport of
remote source waters. In subsequent years, with enough empirical
information, one may build confidence in predictive models. We envision
a time in the future when eMOLT data will be used by local numerical modellers
to both initialize and validate their simulations.

In addition to the physical oceanographic perspective, eMOLT
also provides important environmental information to New England lobstermen.
Do changes in bottom water temperature and salinity explain the migration
patterns and activity of Homarus americanus? Our hypothesis
regarding this aspect of eMOLT has evolved slightly from its initial form.
In Phase I we were interested in "weekly-to-monthly events" but, after
a year experience, we have shifted the Phase II time scale of interest
to a longer "seasonal-to-interannual" viewpoint. Many of our
colleagues are interested in a correlation of lobster abundance and large
scale climate signals such as the North Atlantic Oscillation. As
depicted in the records thus far (see figures in appended section), there
are several episodic events over the course of the year but the dominant
feature in this series is the longer trend. After further investigation
of historical temperature records, it has become clear that the interannual
and even decadal changes in temperature may be the more significant influence
on lobster populations given that the temperature effects may be
most important during reproductive and larval stages of development. While
episodic events may certainly be important in understanding the displacements
and redistribution of lobster abundance, the coverage of data necessary
to resolve these smaller scale phenomenon would be cost prohibitive.
We are now committed to maintaining the eMOLT sampling and have consequently
adjusted the focus of our investigation to both longer time scales and
a larger region.

Having said that, however, there is a potentially important attribute
to capturing short time scales variations. Given the hourly records of
temperature in a variety of places, we have often documented a large degree
of temperature variability due to the semi-diurnal tides. How does the
tidal
variation in temperature affect the lobster? Do they search for frontal
features in the temperature and salinity field rather than an absolute
value of a particular variable? This is a particularly interesting question
that has come up regularly in discussions of the data collected thus far.
The lobstermen have evidently often focussed fishing activity on thermal
fronts as regions of high abundance and capture. As shown,
for example, in Figure 1 below, the variations due to the tide can be depicted
at any one site and the degree of variation changes due to a combination
of the lunar cycle and weather events occurring at the time. Is there
something associated with a thermocline (food and prey availability, for
example) that attracts the animals to that zone?

Project Plan

The eMOLT organization is presented in Figure 2 below. As in the first
two phases of eMOLT, the
Gulf of Maine Lobster Foundation
will act as the central office for distribution of funds and equipment.
They will:

dispersing advanced funds to the inshore associations having received semi-annual
invoices from each of their executive directors

assuming each phase is a one year project

visit each of the lobstermen associations on a annual basis in order to:

consult with the association representatives, the industry representatives,
and the participants about the goals/purpose of both GOMLF and eMOLT

bring together the various associations in a collaborative sense ...

since the long-term objective is to have lobstermen themselves conduct
all aspects of the deployments (from initialization of the probes to emailing
data), the GoMLF will encourage representatives and participants to gradually
work towards that goal and to train them to do so.

setup representation of eMOLT at annual forums as they have in the past
by:

ensuring it gets on the schedule

producing a brochure/information sheet on eMOLT for those annual events

collect and mail salinity probes back to Seabird for recalibrations in
early 2004 with Phase II funds

The association representatives (Casoni, Grindal, Spinazzola, and
Farrey) will conduct the administrative details as in previous phases of
eMOLT as follows:

coordinate eMOLT operation within their respective associations and insure
tasks are conducted by industry reps

distribute equipment & funds to and train industry reps

oversee downloading sessions at least every six months including merging
electronic logsheets and probe calibrations checks

publish quarterly updates eMOLT in association newsletters

quarterly attendance at eMOLT administrators meetings

monthly response to "monthly update for administrators" postings

At least one industry representative per association will
be involved in outreach operations. They are charged with training the
individual participants and enforcing requirements to document data on
either the electronic logger or in prescribed formats. This will
require:

quarterly attendance at eMOLT administrators meetings

quarterly attendance at monthly association meetings with a report on eMOLT
status and to train participants

While association representatives should have been trained in all aspects
of eMOLT operation during phase I and II, they will be refreshed at quarterly
administrators meetings in the future. Industry representatives will
be trained by both the scientific party at administrators meetings
as well as by association representatives at special sessions prior to
each monthly association meetings. The participants themselves will
be trained/briefed by industry reps at a) special quarterly
sessions prior to monthly association meetings and b) at their own home
or boat on a semi-annual basis. Participants will also be trained
by all administrators at the annual fishermen forums (Jan and March).
Phase II participants, in particular, need extensive training
and refreshers. They are being taught to take water samples, upload
data, email data, change batteries, clean cells, and setup the Seabird
Microcat electronics for subsequent deployments. All administrators will
be briefed on the salinity process on a quaterly basis.

The quality control of the temperature and salinity data is conducted
in a series of steps. First, the instrumentation are deployed
together both prior to and after each download session to determine
any offsets/bias of the sensors (the conductivity cell in particular).
These multi-probe experiments are conducted under controlled conditions
and the results are reported. A series of five multi-probe test deployments,
for example, were conducted in Phase I of eMOLT. Even more testing
and care of the sensors will need to be done in the case of salinity (Taylor,
1992). Calibration of the salinity probe will be conducted with near-monthly
water samples and are analyzed at the NMFS Narragansett facility.
To supplement these samples all other projects conducting CTD samples in
the study area will be notified of eMOLT locations and asked to conduct
cast in those locations. The NMFS, DMR, and GOMOOS cruises are three
sources of potential calibration sampling. It will be mutually beneficial
to all projects to collaborate in this effort to obtain the maximum amount
of sample overlaps. Finally, the data will be quality controlled
in a post-processing mode after it is loaded into the ORACLE database.
The purchase of salinity probes in phase II was restricted to six (instead
of the original nine) in order to fund a set of recalibrations in 2004.
It is uncertain as yet how these instruments will hold up under near-bottom
trap deployments. The degree of fouling and frequency/necessity of
cleaning has not been determined at all sites.

The database management will be conducted by Jim Manning using ORACLE
and
web based forms. The data structures have already been developed
but will undoubtedly evolve as the project progresses. There are
currently four separate ORACLE "tables" setup to house the various levels
of information. The first table, for example, stores all the information
about the participants (email, home port, etc). The second table
stores the information about the fixed sites (id, nominal lat/lon, depth).
This later table includes the set of "historical" sites such as Boothbay,
Woods Hole, and the Mass DMF sites. The other two tables include
information about particular deployments and the data collected on those
deployments. Since this is a relational database, each of the four
tables have "key" variables in order to link to each other.

The protocol to be followed by the actual participants has been
developed over several years. It is fully documented in a web served
"getting started manual" with various details on setting up the probe,
where to deploy the probe, documenting the deployment, downloading the
data, and emailing the data. The protocol has been designed
to minimize the effort on the part of the lobstermen but, at the same time,
to obtain accurate and consistently useful forms of data. In many
of these steps there are multiple options to the protocol. In "documenting
the deployment", for example, there are four methods to enter data depending
on the participants experience with computers and electronincs:

Thistle Marine electronic logger

web-served ORACLE form

spreadsheet with several columns

hand-written log sheets

In any case, the critical information includes serial number,
consecutive probe setting#, consecutive site code, Lat, Lon, time (in&out),
and water depth. Participants may optionally record number
of pots, total pound kept, total pounds of shorts, and total pounds of
eggers but this information is automatic in the case of the electronic
loggers. All eMOLT participants are encouraged to attend at least an hour
training session each year. As noted above, these training sessions will
be offered on a quarterly basis and will likely be scheduled on the same
day as the association meetings.

Probes are deployed to maximize the following parameters: length of
deployment at fixed sites, depth of deployment, distance between
deployments, and likelihood of returning to the site in subsequent years.
The first parameter , "length of deployment", is probably the most difficult
criteria for lobstermen to follow since they often move their gear.
Despite this restriction, we have found that some lobstermen do maintain
some fixed sites for months at a time and many have opted to deploy a special
mooring station for eMOLT instrumentation. All interested
participants have been informed of this limitation and are encouraged
to comply with it as much as possible. In the end, we expect to have some
fixed sites, especially in the coastal waters of Maine, that may have less
than a month of data from a particular location but that these exact sites
will be revisited in subsequent years.

Available Resources

As a government agency, the NEFSC is mandated to collect, process, and
serve information associated with local fisheries. As a physical
oceanographer employed by that agency for the past 15 years, Jim Manning,
while primarily occupied for the last decade with the Georges Bank GLOBEC
project, is now responsible for managing NEFSC datasets associated
with the physical water mass conditions. He is now tasked with developing
an integrated operational oceanographic system. With help from
a few others at the Woods Hole Lab, the physical oceanographic sampling
on research cruises by NOAA vessels (including observations with
Conductivity, Temperature and Depth recorders and various other shipboard
sensors) are processed, analyzed, and web-served. An effort is underway
to load all of these on-going data collections together with historical
archives into the same ORACLE database. The computing power and support
is provided by the NEFSC Data Management Systems. While maintaining
both hardware and software for the entire center, DMS continually integrates
the newest technological advances. The latest developments include
an upgrade to ORACLE 8i and Arc Internet Mapping Services.

Patrice Farrey, as interim director of the GoMLF, Patrice has
very close contact with the lobster industry. Her primary task now
is to maintain communications between the various lobstermen associations
and ensure that projects like eMOLT are merged with related efforts around
the entire Gulf of Maine Region. As both interim director of the
Gulf of Maine Lobster Foundation and executive director of the Maine Lobstermen
Association, she has extensive knowledge of the industry and has near-weekly
contact with many of the eMOLT participants throughout the state of Maine.
Many of the eMOLT participants are also involved with issues addressed
regularly by MeLA. David Sleeper, the manager of the Spruce
Head Coop, has near-daily contact with many of the participants in that
area, a dockside office, and computer skills. David exemplifies the
person required to act as an eMOLT industry representative.

Bonnie Spinazzola, the executive director of the Atlantic Offshore
Lobstermen Association, has been involved with all aspects of fisheries
fifteen years. Well aware of the needs and concerns of the
lobster industry, she represents dozens of individuals. She
is involved with research efforts other than eMOLT and is committed
to integrating projects in order to maximize the benefit for her constituents.
Marc Palombo, a lobsterman out of Sandwich, has been involved with
eMOLT for several years. It was his phone call back in the fall of
1995, in fact, that started it all. He has made over 100 deployment and
recoverys of instrumented moorings in waters deeper than 200m with
99% success and some of these have included Seabird Microcats. He
downloads his own temperature data and documents electronically.
He will act as the AOLA industry representative.

Clare Grindal, retired from 35 years of teaching at Deer
Isle Maine and now executive director of the Downeast Lobstermen
Association, is a strong advocate for all lobstermen in her zones. Further
down the coast in Cutler, Charlene Cates also has both the computer
skills of a school administrator and, being the wife of a well known lobstermen
Jeremy Cates, is quite knowledgable and capable of conducting the duties
of an industry representative.

Dave Casoni is both a lobstermen and a retiring school teacher
with near-weekly contact with many of the eMOLT participants. He
and Bernie Feeney, the president of the MaLA, are quite capable
of assuming eMOLT responsibilities at the association and industry level,
respectively.

Given that many of the above mentioned representatives are closely connected
to local school systems, the collaboration of eMOLT with the NEC -funded
"Adopt-a-Boat" program is under
consideration. In the advent that some associations get significant
quantity of handwritten logs submitted by those participants not using
an electronic logger, the assistance of high school students in data entry
activity may be possible. It will be up to the industry representatives
to build this relationship with local schools and provide in-school presentations
on the eMOLT project. The scientific party could deliver ready-made
presentations to the industry reps in the form of either Power Point files
and overhead transparencies. Discussions with Cliff Goudey and Brandy
Moran will continue in the coming months concerning the potential integration
of projects.

Dissemination of Results

All eMOLT participants will contribute to the same centralized database
regardless of association or project affiliation. Many of the AOLA/eMOLT
participants may be involved in other projects (such as the "Automated
Monitoring of Offshore Lobster Fishery") and many of the MLA/eMOLT participants
may be involved with in other projects (such as the "Ventless Traps Survey"),
but the environmental monitoring information will be stored in a common
archive. The lobster catch information will NOT be shared between
participants The data will be served by users entering information
on a web-served ORACLE form. Specific criteria such as time or position
(lat/lon) will be used to extract user-selected portion of the time series.
Prepared plots as well as user-requested plots have been and will
be generated with a combination of ORACLE, perl, MATLAB, and Java
programming at www.emolt.org.

In order to work towards an "operational oceanography", we have
begun to coordinate activities with the Gulf of Maine Oceanographic Observing
System (GOMOOS). Several meetings and discussions have taken place
to ensure that eMOLT data along with all the other physical oceanographic
data collected at NEFSC be accessible to GOMOOS and vice-versa. Individuals
at Maine's Division of Marine Resources have also been involved in this
process and, in fact, take the lead in some aspects of the project such
as incorporating GIS.

Individual lobstermen will have the opportunity to meet with eMOLT representatives
on a monthly basis at their respective association meetings where
an eMOLT status report will be presented by the industry representatives.
As participants, they are encouraged to do so on at least an annual basis
for training purposes. Special eMOLT sessions will be conducted prior to
association meetings on a quarterly basis to discuss the project and, on
at least a semi-annual basis, to download batches of data and test for
probe bias/accuracies. Individual lobstermen will meet one-on-one
with industry representatives on a semi-annual basis and with Jim
Manning on an annual basis (either at the annual forums/weekends or some
other prearranged forum such as his annual trip to each association) to
discuss catch data and review results. Annual reports/plots for each
lobstermen will be prepared for this meeting in hardcopy form.

Harding,G.C., K.F. Drinkwater, and W.P. Vass. 1983. Factors influencing
the size of American lobster (Homarus americanus) stocks along the Atlantic
coast of Nova Scotia, Gulf of St. Lawrence, and Gulf of Maine: A new synthesis.
Can J.Fish. Aquatic. Sci., 40, 168-184.

Harding, G.C. 1992. American Lobster (Homarus americanus Milne Edwards):
a discussion paper on their environmental requirements and the known anthropogenic
effects on their populations. Can J. Fish. Aquatic. Sci.,1887.

It is expected that each of the project administrators (4 association
reps, 4 industry reps, Farrey, and Manning) will all be devoting
at least two full days per month to routine eMOLT tasks and an additional
six full days per year in attending eMOLT meetings. The task
associated with each administrator was outlined earlier in the Project
Plan section. In the case of the representatives, nearly half of
the "routine eMOLT tasks" is involved with outreach activity and
half with data processing activity. The "outreach activity" involves
training other individuals in the next level of organization. The
"data processing activity" , in the case of association reps, involves
a) merging electronic documentation as submitted by the industry
reps, b) downloading data in batches, and c) conducting calibration checks
on probes. The "data processing activity" , in the case
of industry reps, involves merging of handwritten documentation in
to standard spreadsheet format. In Manning's case, "routine eMOLT
tasks" involves a) processing the ~semi-annual batches of data from each
association, b) maintaining the database, and c) enhancing the web site
to provide more user friendly access and display of data. While his salary
is covered by NOAA/NMFS, an overhead is now charged to the project to cover
the 15% of his time involved with this project.

The only other major expenses proposed is a set of laptops and,
in MaLA's case, a set of electronic loggers. While many of the industry
reps may have desktop machines of their own, a laptop is required for the
type of work needed here. While these laptops do not need to be high powered
units, they do need to be fully equipped with software utilities (Microsoft
Office), network capability, and printers. The later is needed to
produce hard copy plots for those participants not connected to the internet.
Where association reps got funds for laptops in previous phases, the GOMLF
and NEFSC are now requesting the same in this phase. Due to the recent
budget cuts in the Mass state gov't at the Division of Marine Resources
and the fact that their routine monitoring will be limited, the MaLA is
requesting funds to outfit their members with electronic loggers to make
up for the sampling that the state has been doing to some extent.
The MaLA is also the only association that has not recieved funding for
these units in the past.

Attached Resumes of Principle Investigators

J Manning NOAA/NEFSC

B Spinazzola Atlantic Offshore Lobstermen Association

C Grindal Downeast Lobstermen Association

D Casoni Mass Lobstermen Association

P Farrey GoMLF & Maine Lobstermen Association

B Feeney Mass Lobstermen Association

D Sleeper Spruce Head Fishermens Cooperative

Description of Prior Results

The statistics on the eMOLT project to date is best presented in the
form of Table 1.

Total number of individuals involved

104

Total number of individuals who have deployed probes

65

Total number of individuals who have returned data to date

43

Total number of documented temperature sites

83

Total number of documented salinity sites

5

Number of Atlantic Offshore Participants

16

Number of Massachusetts Participants

27

Number of Maine Participants

21

Number of Downeast Participants

12

Total Number of Temperature Observations

531495

Average Temperature Record Length in Months

8.9

Total Number of Salinity Observations

32980

Average Salinity Record Length in Months

9.1

Probes are widely distributed around the Gulf of Maine (Figures 3 and
4) and in time over the last several months (Figures 5 and 6).
Most of the time series are several months long with many of the records
documenting significant events that resulted in temperature variations
of several degrees. The five salinity probes deployed thus far are
geographically separated from each other and from those of GOMOOS.
We have coordinated are efforts with the GOMOOS operation and intend to
develop that relationship continually (Figure 4).

Ever since the onset
of this project, the eMOLT results have been posted on the web. We
now have a registered domain name of "emolt.org". On
entering this site, users are presented with a variety of links.
The "results from the field" link, for example, presents a map of the Gulf
of Maine. By clicking on small dots representing individuals
by homeport, links to a set of plots are listed. The user can then
view either detailed plots of actual time series or filtered
summary plots of the temperature time series for that particular
site. In the case of the summary plots, a climatological seasonal
cycle and its standard deviation (based of past NOAA-collected
CTD data) is often plotted as a background reference. In this way,
users can tell how current temperature relates to historical conditions.
While nearly all the eMOLT sites have only one year of data thus far, there
are a few sites that have been occupied for multiple year so that interannaul
comparisons are possible. Marc Palombo, for example, has occupied
site "TA15" for nearly two years (Figure 7) and can see, after taking a
30-day running average of the highly variable record at that location,
the two years are nearly the same. Most of the effort on the part of the
scientific party is developing these types of plots in a user friendly
environment.. The longterm objective is to develop interactive mapping
routines so that users can zoom in and view data.

While catch data is available for some of these sites on a near-weekly
basis, they are, of course, not presented on publicly available web sites.
Plots of catch records are made for individual lobstermen and the data
is discussed privately off-line.

The results of the eMOLT first year of sampling has been presented in
a series of forums over the last several months. The project was
presented at the UMASS Dartmouth's Physics Department's weekly seminar
in November 2001, at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center
Tri-Annual Symposium (Westport, Ct) in December 2001, at the Massachusetts
Lobstermen's Annual Weekend (Falmouth, Ma) in January 2002,
and at the Maine Fishermens Forum (Rockland, Me) in March 2002. Much
of these presentations included an analysis of the historical data collected
prior to the eMOLT project. The eMOLT abstract and presentation previously
submitted to the National Shellfish Meeting (14-18 April) in Mystic,
Ct. will be withdrawn but a seminar on eMOLT will be presented instead
on April 19th, 2002 at the Marine Institute in Dublin, Ireland.

Calibration and comparison of the various probes was conducted in a
series of control experiments in the past year few years. Multiple
probes from various manufacturers (VEMCO, ONSET, YSI, and SEABIRD) were
deployed together either in a tank at the NEFSC Aquarium or off the dock
in Woods Hole Harbor in order to validate the relative response of all
the thermistors. The results of these test with complete details
and plots are posted on the eMOLT web site
under "Administrators Manual". Biases between probes were often more than
twice the value specified by the manufacturer. As a consequence of
this result, we contracted the ONSET corporation to engineer a probe
specifically for our needs. The new probe designed specifically for eMOLT
applications, delivered in March 2001, has a temperature range of 0-20
degC and a 0.09 degC accuracy. Since the variability of interest
are often less than 1 degC, it is essential that eMOLT continue to carefully
monitor the performance of these probes. As part of our routine procedure
at the end of each sampling season, probes are gathered, deployed
together in controlled environments, and tested for biases and sensor drift.
In the case of salinity probes, water samples will be taken on a
near-monthly basis as a calibration check. A total of 43 Niskin samples
have been taken thus far.